Xbox Live Indie Games: no way to make a living

Xbox Live Indie Games get little visibility and rarely sell more than a few …

If you want to publish a console video game, there's no easier route than the Xbox Live Indie Games program. But while it's relatively easy to get your game on the service, it's hard to get it noticed. There's a lot of junk on XBLIG, so much so that a group of developers banded together at the end of last year to promote quality indie titles. There have been success stories—like the recently released FortressCraft, which managed to sell 16,000 units on the day of release—but they're not exactly common.

So with virtually no promotion, and with average earnings of just $3,800 per title, why do developers continue to create games for the platform?

"You're an upstart, brash young punk who wants to make a video game," Jason Wishnov, from Iridium Studios, told Ars. "You have no or minimal industry experience, and you enjoy Mountain Dew. Where else are you going to turn?"

Iridium recently released a well received game called Sequence, a mash-up of a rhythm game and an RPG. Despite receiving positive coverage from places like Edge and Kill Screen magazines, the game only managed to sell around 2,000 copies, which Wishnov describes as "a bit of a flop."

The team did manage to recoup the cost of development, but that was largely due to a very successful Kickstarter campaign, which raised $2,600 on an original goal of just $600.

While Wishnov doesn't have any regrets, he explains that Iridium is looking at PC and mobile as potential options for future projects, and would likely only return to XBLIG for a much smaller scale project. Sequence took around two and a half years to develop.

"It's not financially viable to do a larger-scale project and [not] expect with any certainty to make some money," he told Ars.

Sequence

Cthulhu can't cash in

That's true even for the more successful games on XBLIG. Zeboyd Games is one of the most visible developers on the platform, developing charming retro-style RPGs like Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves the World. The former managed to sell around 50,000 copies for $1 each, while the latter moved a little more than 16,000 copies at $3 apiece. Those are impressive numbers by XBLIG standards, but that doesn't necessarily make them satisfying for the development team.

"I think our games could sell a lot better than they did with a better platform and more visibility," Zeboyd's Robert Boyd told Ars. "The sales for Cthulhu Saves the World were particularly disappointing—we put a lot of heart and soul into the game over a significantly longer period of development time and yet that extra effort didn't result in a similar increase in revenue."

In order to test this theory, Boyd will take both games, bundled together, to the PC. The enhanced versions will be available on both Steam and Gamersgate later this month, and one of the main motivating factors appears to be money. Zeboyd managed to raise nearly $7,000 to support development of the PC versions of the games, and is hoping that the much larger PC user base will be a more financially viable platform for the studio's games. While Zeboyd's next game will also be released on both XBLIG and PC, it's likely that the studio will leave Microsoft's indie platform for good after this.

"We'd like to make games for a living and make even more impressive games than we've already made—this isn't possible without more money than we've been making so far," Boyd explained.

The somewhat negative perception of the Xbox indie games platform hasn't stopped developers, however. More than 1,400 games have been published on XBLIG since its debut in 2008, and some, like Avatar Paintball, have managed to gross hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue. Those success stories are exceedingly rare, and most developers seem to be well aware of that. Instead of monetary gains, many developers are simply using the service as a way to gain experience.

Spooky Squid games is doing just that with its upcoming release They Bleed Pixels, a violent, pixel art-infused action platformer.

"It's a bit of a calculated risk going with XBLIG," Miguel Sternberg, one half of Spooky Squid, told Ars. "We wanted to get some experience coding for a console and liked that XBLIG was a relatively open, hassle-free marketplace like the iPhone app store. One bonus for going with a console is that we can count on everyone playing with a gamepad, something you can't count on when developing for the PC."

They Bleed Pixels

Sternberg doesn't have any predictions for game sales, instead saying that while "the game is very solid and offers a different platforming experience then the existing games on XBLIG...it's still a very chaotic marketplace."

Don't quit your day job

The platform could certainly use some improvements. Things like an enhanced storefront, increased visibility throughout the rest of Xbox Live, more flexible pricing, and maybe even integration with the Kinect API would go a long way towards making XBLIG a place where more than a handful of game developers can make a living.

"The only way it would be more viable is to add achievements and more price points," explained Luke Schneider, the one-man development team behind the excellent radiangames series of XBLIG shooters. "Allowing offline play would be fantastic as well. In other words, make it a more even playing field like Apple's app store. But I don't believe MS will do that due to pressure from publishers. XBLIG is what it is now, and my only hope for something like it succeeding more thoroughly is if Sony or MS pushes an open development channel with the launch of their next console(s), whenever that ends up being."

So, no, chances are you won't be able to quit your day job by releasing a game on XBLIG. And, yes, virtually all of the developers we spoke to are considering moving on from the platform. But all seem to view their experience as valuable, which in the end is part of the point of XBLIG: it's a place where virtually anyone can make a game that can be played on a console. Devs just need to know what they're getting into.

"All developers should be aware of what XBLIG is and is not," said Wishnov. "Don't have unrealistic expectations!"

It depends where you want a job. If you want a mobile job you should probably have a nice portfolio of mobile apps. Want a job in the game industry? An indie game would help, but not so much an iPhone app.

When I saw a game about someone's cat, it was a surefire bet I will not visit the "Indie Games" category again.

I can understand the developers' reasons and it makes sense, but I'm at a loss why they're charging anyone to access them, especially when a description is about as informative as "We made this game. Hope you like it."

Get recognized first then charge people for the honor of being famous.

It depends where you want a job. If you want a mobile job you should probably have a nice portfolio of mobile apps. Want a job in the game industry? An indie game would help, but not so much an iPhone app.

Wouldn't having a mobile game still be a positive? A game is a game, and with as strong as mobile hardware is today, a good game still would showcase a lot of effort and skill.

people have the false notion that if you make mobile games (ie iphone apps) you will become rich; that is not even close to the truth. on the iphone app store daily you get a flood of thousands of useless apps that drown out the good ones, and everyone expects your game to be either free or 99 cents. it's very hard to get noticed unless your game is very very good.

we created a game back a few years ago on the app store, it was rated as an apple staff favorite and the trial/free version was #13 on the top puzzle games list. the paid version made back around $3000, but the game took around 2 months to make. so we didnt make any profit and actually lost money.

of course there are stories of people making millions and that really is the motivation of most developers, the reality is very few ever make that kind of money and the rest of the apps make a few thousand dollars and most devs just end up giving up making future games - this is the case on just about any indie platform - xbox, iphone, etc.

unless your game is really good and you can get some buzz out there you dont really have much a chance to make a living.

Just because you make a game, people don't automatically buy it. Wait, when did reality kick in? This is what we've been saying to the gaming, movie, and music industries forever. You aren't owed a living just because you made something. You have just as much right to flat out fail as you have to succeed. And right now, things are worse than ever as there's no shortage of content both great and terrible.

It is a shame the XBLIG section doesn't get more general exposure + better (filtered) exposure/promotion of good titles. I have purchased about a dozen IGs and my most recent purchase, an RC helicopter, is a great game. Period.

On the other hand the biggest splash on the HD consoles this gen, imho, is XBLA. So while it is regrettable that garage studios are still finding a difficult time making money on the consoles (unlike the mobile space) the fact there is now a thriving space for $5-$15 titles on the consoles is a great thing and has offered some of the best gaming this gen. So things are moving in the right direction.

And that may be what is missed in this article: There are many good $5 XBLA games and a lot of great sub-$10 XBLA titles. I am not sure many IGs really compete due to this. Even with better exposure the problem will be is that few IGs really compete well. Tank Battles was a good $5 buy but I am finding that compared to the $5 XBLA titles (and a handful of titles bought at 200pts during the holidays) that the big IG issue is quality. My suggestion would be to do something simple that plays great. The Helicopter game is a great example: cell shaded graphics, only 5 levels and 4 copters, but the controls are perfect. Without a hook the competition from new console games, used games, XBLA, and other platforms users have access to (especially free flash games) most IGs are forgettable so, not unlike "real" games they really need to offer something compelling.

I think the point of this is that while XLBIG has the lowest barrier to entry of anything in the console space, it also gets zero promotion. Games in there are basically invisible to most 360 users.

It's not like if you get a game on Steam where you can have a sale and get the game listed on the front page, which brings instant eyeballs. And that's where the idea of "pressure from publishers" comes from that's mentioned in the article. BIgger console games are a closed garden with a much higher barrier to entry, and they want to keep the promotional space for themselves. Again compare to Steam, where games like Dragon Age 2 share the same space with much tinier and unknowns like Recettear (which is much better then Dragon Age 2). Recettear wouldn't have been anywhere near the hit it was without the initial attention Steam's eyeballs gave it (word of mouth took it from there).

On the PC it's entirely possible to set yourself up to get at least a minimum of promotion from any DD service. It's also possible on mobile, though more difficult due to the sheer volume of crap. In XLBIG it's impossible because Microsoft simply won't promote anything in there in say the 360 dashboard.

"add achievements and more price points," explained Luke Schneider, the one-man development team behind the excellent radiangames series of XBLIG shooters. "Allowing offline play would be fantastic as well"This. I'm a trophy nut - if I had Xbox I'd be an achievement nut and I wouldn't care to look at games without them. And I damn sure better be able to play the games if my internet connection goes out.

Just because you make a game, people don't automatically buy it. Wait, when did reality kick in? This is what we've been saying to the gaming, movie, and music industries forever. You aren't owed a living just because you made something. You have just as much right to flat out fail as you have to succeed. And right now, things are worse than ever as there's no shortage of content both great and terrible.

While I agree with you, I feel you're missing the point of the article. It does not suggest people should pay for Indie games any more than they should for non-Indie games. It's a matter of visibility.

It's difficult for Indie artists in ANY category, be it Music, Movies, or Games. It's (unfortunately) the nature of the beast. The problem is that they get little exposure. Few people are willing to "bet their money" (buying without the foundation of trust) on a game to an Indie artist's game as willingly as to a big-name company such as Squaresoft who (used to?) have a great reputation for making very good games.

That's the problem: indie artists rarely succeed in garnering a reputation for 'good' games. This problem only makes the fact that they get little coverage/review even worse, because their market is inundated with trash.

if it weren't for ARS I don't think XBLIG would get any love what so ever. I've purchased almost every game they've reviewed (XBLA also). So thank ARS fellow indie developers for the $150+ i've given to you in the past 6 months. I've put it alot of time into the Dishwasher series alone and i still have a few games i've purchased that i have yet to fire up like cthulu saves the world.

If you're an indie developer, your best environment to compete on would be Steam. Unlike Microsoft, Valve supports its indie developers extremely well. There are always promos on Steam for the indie games that developers are trying to get out there, and the bundle packs they sell in, when grouped with other indie games, sell quite well.

Look at what happened before Portal 2, for instance. It was a simultaneous promotion for Portal 2 as well as for the 12 indie games involved. Millions of people bought them and played them like crazy. Even right now, indie games are being featured alongside popular titles for Steam's Summer Sale.

As much as people dream of being console developers, your best bet is to start on Steam and work your way up.

I looked into developing for XBLIG and thought it wasn't worth it from a market perspective. The next step up with XBLA requires you to get Microsoft approval for your game to be released on the platform and is encumbered with development licenses and such that put it out of the reach of a one man shop. At the time, to release and ABLA game it required an $8K developer license per developer.

What bothered me the most about it is that XNA was not available to XBLA development. You had to use the C++ Xbox library which seemed counterintuitive. That was a year or so ago when I was told this so things might be different now but for me, developing on XBLA was too expensive and I didn't believe the XBLIG track would net me enough profits to make it worth the investment.

if it weren't for ARS I don't think XBLIG would get any love what so ever. I've purchased almost every game they've reviewed (XBLA also). So thank ARS fellow indie developers for the $150+ i've given to you in the past 6 months. I've put it alot of time into the Dishwasher series alone and i still have a few games i've purchased that i have yet to fire up like cthulu saves the world.

Yeah, I have a half dozen XBLIG, and they were almost all because of some site I trusted mentioning them. I think Penny Arcade and Ctrl+Alt+Del are the two biggest drivers for me. Any game they mention tends to be quality. Soulcaster is my personal favorite - excellent game with pretty great music. Nice level of difficulty too.

My biggest complaint with indie games is the lack of offline play as mentioned in the article. It's utter horseshit. And while I realize that is not the fault of developers I still can't bring myself to purchase anymore indie titles. Sigh.

"Allowing offline play would be fantastic as well." I'm a bit unclear about this. Does xbox not allow playing XBLIG games without internet connection? (I understand that you need one to download the game in the first place but that quote makes the impression I need a connection to play it after it's been downloaded even if it's a single player experience.)

To appease ESRB, games must be online so they don't have to be rated. I don't understand the logic behind it, but that is the source of the requirement to always play "online." Something about "online interactions not rated by ESRB."

I heard there is a tight limit on updates to your Xbox LIVE game. All of the patches for a particular game cannot add up to more than XX MB. Where is the source of that requirement? It seems artificial.

I heard there is a tight limit on updates to your Xbox LIVE game. All of the patches for a particular game cannot add up to more than XX MB. Where is the source of that requirement? It seems artificial.

Plus, there's no way to deliver a patch to the core executable. Those patches have to address data files is how I understand it to work. It's lip-service support for developers in the program. I can see the desire to not have to build out your own distribution network and just hooking into the Xbox one (or Steam or whatever) but MS isn't really holding up much of their end of the bargain.

It's the most frustrating marketplace because basically there's no filter on the front end-- some really terrible games get into the program-- there's no support or marketing, meaningful rating, etc. You have to just know what you want and go find it--- unless it didn't sell well enough and MS dropped it.

At least with other distribution methods, you have control over those variables and can figure out how to monetize the game on your terms.

Welcome to Ars!It looks like the second quote is in reference to XBox Live Arcade which is different from the Indie game marketplace that this article is talking about. I have bought tons of stuff from XBLA, but the only indie game I have bought is Breath of Death.

Just because you make a game, people don't automatically buy it. Wait, when did reality kick in? This is what we've been saying to the gaming, movie, and music industries forever. You aren't owed a living just because you made something. You have just as much right to flat out fail as you have to succeed. And right now, things are worse than ever as there's no shortage of content both great and terrible.

While I agree with you, I feel you're missing the point of the article. It does not suggest people should pay for Indie games any more than they should for non-Indie games. It's a matter of visibility.

It's difficult for Indie artists in ANY category, be it Music, Movies, or Games. It's (unfortunately) the nature of the beast. The problem is that they get little exposure. Few people are willing to "bet their money" (buying without the foundation of trust) on a game to an Indie artist's game as willingly as to a big-name company such as Squaresoft who (used to?) have a great reputation for making very good games.

That's the problem: indie artists rarely succeed in garnering a reputation for 'good' games. This problem only makes the fact that they get little coverage/review even worse, because their market is inundated with trash.

I really didn't mean that to come off quite as snarky as it sounded. I'm just so terribly tired of the content industry expecting a golden parachute just because they made some product.

I wonder if the problem simply is there aren't enough people willing to spend $$ on these games. Most people have a finite amount of time and money to spend on games, some of which will get spent on XBLIG. So each XBLIG title is trying to grab some of that spend with little ability to increase the number of spenders.

I wonder if the problem simply is there aren't enough people willing to spend $$ on these games. Most people have a finite amount of time and money to spend on games, some of which will get spent on XBLIG. So each XBLIG title is trying to grab some of that spend with little ability to increase the number of spenders.

I play Xbox once every day or two, and I didn't realize there was this indie area. IMO the dashboard could be used much better to promote indie games, but I'm guessing they have been relegated to the back corner by that "pressure from publishers" mentioned in the article.

I wish MS would really step in and have one of the primary Dashboard tiles be specifically an "Indie Deal of the Day" or something. If this exists already, then it isn't featured prominently enough. I've logged too much time on Xbox not to have noticed an entire source of content.

I have three XBLIG: Breath of Death VII, Zombie Estate, and Home Run Challenge (I think that's it's name). THe VAST majority of XBLIGs are complete garbage. It's like the appstore for Apple. For every good app there's about 10 fart apps, only in XBLIG the ratio is more like 1:100.

Directly to the point of this article: I didn't even know there was an XBLIG channel! I knew about XBLA and that was it. Talk about poor exposure! As to having to be connected online while playing the game, that's a non-starter. I refuse to buy a game that requires me to be online even when playing an offline component - and have seen the same sentiment from many posters in Ars.

So even though I buy indie/small developer games, MS has made it so I won't ever buy XBLIG games.

"Things like an enhanced storefront, increased visibility throughout the rest of Xbox Live, more flexible pricing..."

Until this happens, Microsoft's indie games will continue to be a bunch of massage games and fish tank simulators.

Not all Indie developers are equal, it behooves Microsoft to recognize this and assist the Indies investing time and resources into quality products. Kind of like an EA partners for the XBLIG platform.

Wouldn't the mobile platforms (iOS/Android/etc.) be a better idea? Far larger potential audience, though obviously you can't make the exact same games work.

A potential audience that gets plenty of good games for a dollar or free. Likely to be noticed a bit better I think but nothing spectacular. Most iPhone game companies I've heard of make ends meet, that's about it.

I read up on the XBLIG games and moved on from the platform before starting. Small file-size requirements, lack of achievements, fixed pricing structure... and in the end most of the "covers" in that section don't look very good at all so I rarely ever feel like looking at the actual games...the few times I have I've usually been disappointing. I'd release an XBLA game, that has some acceptable limits for an Indie title, but the Indie section aside from being approachable for development doesn't have much else going for it and to be honest if you want something like that you can buy a game engine and go multi-platform anyway with slightly more effort.

Not that I think you couldn't make a decent game for XBLIG, but the effort didn't even look worth it. A multiplayer only shooter seems like it would tank due to few players due to difficult recognition.